The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1887-12-19
HOLIDAY SCENES.
Christmas Shoppers-Decoratio for
the Inner Table.

set in a fortnight earlier than usual and
out-of-town shoppers and city shoppers
are making the town pandemonium.
The world has gone shopping mad New
York gets an annual Christmas upsetting,
but it never saw anything like the present
delirium.
In big shopping store, turned for the
time being like all the rest into a toy and
hric-a-brac bazaar, there was an exciting
time the other day. Two or three mechan-
ical toys had been set going, and the crush
TO see the dancing bear beat the drum and
the negro minstrel clatter the bones and
bonnie Ben Butler walk across the counter
with his off eye carefully screened was
enough to crack ones ribs. 1t was jam Of
of women and children, and the way they
pushed and struggled was worse than I'M
civilized. A S year-old child was caught in
the maelstrom. She was too badly fright
ened TO cry, and before anybody thought OF
her she was past crying. There was a rush
for the elevator and the stairway, and be-
fore the little limp figure with its white
face could be extricated from the crowd
and carried to the open air its chances of
enjoying any Christmas gifts were seriously
jeopardized. People satisfied themselves
that the baby girl was alive and swarmed
back, a denser crowd than ever, into the
store again.
her eyes told me yesterday that she had
not been to BED before o'clock for ten days
or more. The store was hurly burly till
late in the evening and then there was the
clearing up, and the preparations for next
day.
10 walk two blocks on any shopping thor
oughfare may take, at busy hour, some
thing like fifteen or twenty minutes. The
streets swarm with women, women loaded
a. ,H1-ifh
with sharp tones in their usually even voices,
women with nervous gestures, unnaturally
bright eyes, women Christmas desperate.
Not woman you meet but has the shopping
mania. They would drop before they would
go home.
The big lunch restaurants that women fire.
quent are black with people from IL o'clock
until night. The walters, in spite of the
tradition to the contrary, are getting rich
GU tips. for it costs something like an hour,
which is more valuable than a silver quarter
to get chocolate and rolls in the usual wait
for-one S-turn-way. Women even take their
places at the long stand up counters and
scramble for a bite and a sup with the bust
est of the business men.
DELIVERY WAGONS ARE GATHERING
ABOUT
in every direction. There is one house
which keeps $50 going and others get up to
iS5. The parcel man rings your bell at
midnight or even at O'Clock in the morn
ing. Heis too sleepy and too cross to apollo
gize for waking you, and TO offer the ex-
rlanation that he has been driving since
early evening and has two dozen more bun
dies to carry home.
The elevated trains are packed with push
ing and crowding femininity. The horse
cars are loaded down with standing women
swaying this way and that, all together,
IL IL.
Cling, many headed being as they cling to
the straps, People get reckless about ele-
vators. In one of these lifts whose car
rYipg capacity was placarded in big let
ters as 800 pounds, saw thirty-six wom-
en- squeeze themselves like sartlines the other
day
Christmas means millions of money.
There are Won ~ ii numbers in New York
who lay out thousands, and few whose hus-
bands have an income of 81, 500 who do not
average $50 in Christmas gifts.
Christmas means doctors bills, for the
society strain which affects comparatively
few women is not to be compared to the
shopping strain which first gives mad ex-
hilaration and then exhaustS big proper
ton of the feminine par of tn, city.
81 have promised my wife the prettiest
buy so much as a Christmas card until
after New Years, said gentleman yester-
day
How is that!n asked him.
All my feminine relations went to Flor
ida TO recuperate after the holidays last year,
and ! want somebody at home to make life
worth living, this"
His wife. l may add, has gone out of town,
because she knew her will power wasn't
equal to the task of keeping her promise if
she stayed within reach of shop window
temptations here
Christmas is an immense institution in
the city: and, though the weaklings ought
to look out for themselves, women who
are physically able to enjoy it find the
crazy shopping whirl the enjoyment of the
year.
THE NEWEST THING
III dinner table decorations is a new
cloth.
The long fringes which have obtained in
the past are appropriate now for the silk and
linen o'clock tea spreads only. For a cere-
mon.ous dinner to be served on a polished
wood table the cloth is hemstitched, and has
drawn work border, sometimes exuuisitelv
wrought, through which the ten coats of
varnish that make the table top shine
Ike mirror are given an opportunity to
show
High flower pieces for dinners have EN-
tirely gone by. To set a pretty table, and
one which at the same time shall be in the
latest mode, you want flowers and nothing
but flowers. At very swell affair given a
few days ago, ribbon bed of dark red
chrysanthemums glowed from one end of
the table to the other. A moss bed had been
laid i'll long rectangle through the middle
of the table, low silver wire inclosed it,
and into the space so prepared chrysanthe-
NUNS by the thousand had been thrust their
noddlng heads touching one another and
making a rich mass of color. The candele-
bra bad their feet hidden in the flowers and
no high decorations to obscure the view
across the table were used.
At Christmas dinners plats of holly will
be laid up and down the table, reserving a
small space at either end, and simple ar
arrangements of mistletoe and holly viii be
placed at the corners.
The simplest decoration for the dinner
table, and one available for many success
sive occasions, is a narrow plush scarf to be
laid lengthwise of the white cloth. With
this and some handfuls of flowers to heap
about the base of the candelebra or couple
of the Boulanger epergnes which hold but a
half dozen roses apiece a table equipment
needs NJ additions The fairy lamps for the
lunch table. if one forgives their lack OF
novelty in view of their prettiness, want fine
flowers heaped about them or to be set in
beds Of flowers: but there are new things in
colored candles with fancy shades which are
fast usurping their place.
ROSE CoGHLAN WAS AN INTERESTING SIGHT
surrounded by "a group of clamorous news
boys in the City Hall Park the other after
noon.